


His Image

by Draegi



Category: Super Danganronpa Another 2 - Fandom, sdra2 - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Fainting, Gen, Hallucinations, Sleep Deprivation, not sure what else to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 07:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30085788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draegi/pseuds/Draegi
Summary: After three days of nonstop work, Mikado's sanity starts to slip.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	His Image

It had been a little over 74 hours since Mikado Sannoji had last slept, compounding a grand total five days of a seven day week in which he had not laid down to rest so much as a minute. As his fingers tapped frantically at an old keyboard, wavering and shivering slightly with exhaustion and overuse, all that illuminated his dry, sunken-in eyes was the light of a computer monitor. Before him were lines upon lines of code that numbered somewhere in the hundreds of millions: a complicated program stolen from an innovator who would soon become one of many sacrificial prisoners confined within it. Of course, the program could not be used as it was now. It needed to be tweaked and reworked and compiled upon with AIs, firewalls, and a whole list of major and minor adjustments in order to not only operate smoothly, but manifest his dreams as a reality. He needed to see _him_ again. 

At this point his eyes had become adjusted to a semi-permanent blur as they struggled to stay open and a piercing migraine had nestled itself just above his left eye, radiating across that entire side of his skull. His body almost seemed to be actively petrifying in its seat, with the most consistent and obvious movement-- bar his rapid typing-- being his pulse, hard and fast. It was so present that he could almost hear it emanating from outside his chest between the clicks of the keys, and with every beat of his struggling heart, a dull ache spread throughout his thorax. He desperately ached for sleep, but he remained fixated on the screen as his progress continued, in a half-daze with the state of his mind not too far behind the rest of him.

He began to lose track of the words and numbers: their meaning, their purpose, and their order. In his years of practice and natural talent, he had to consciously call back to memories that became intrinsic long ago as his mind’s ability to process the information in front of him seemed to rot away like meat in the sun. And the world around him, though not in his line of focus, seemed to shift and decay into something like a vignette of ghosts. Little flickers of movement like embers in a bonfire dashed into and swirled around in his line of sight before disappearing into thin air, startling him with their sudden movement every time. He didn’t ever turn away from the screen, but still flinched and quietly whimpered every time he was startled by one, sending a bolt of pain like an electric shock through his body with every involuntary movement. As time marched on, the first tints of baby blue appeared in the sky through a window covered by blinds, letting in small glimmers of light through their cracks, but the dancing shadows remained visible and grew increasingly distressing in appearance. 

Little flickers like fire turned into moving, swirling shapes that never maintained a proper form for more than a few seconds, but seemed to vaguely resemble human beings. Long-fingered hands reached out before disappearing into a mess of smoke and static. Faint, white eyes hovering in the eye sockets of malnourished skulls shifted and shuddered at a different frequency than that of the body they were attached to. Time marched on and the images began to appear simultaneously more clear and more distorted, and Mikado could no longer consistently focus on coding. Each pound of his racing heart was like a punch to the chest as his breathing became labored. A sudden coldness enveloped his body leaving his hands and feet feeling almost completely numb. It was the onset of something like fear, and something in his mind compelled him to look behind him: to look into the sea of creeping images.

He turned around slowly, and the mass of moving images shifted with him too… with one exception. A large, black mass stood directly behind him only a few feet away. Its figure was difficult to discern, blurring into mounds of red, green, and blue that warped into shapes like fractals and radiated off the central body like solar flares. His eyes began to adjust, unable to move as the vice-grip of dread held him in place, and as the external static died down, a discernable shape became visible.

A person. In contrast to the chaos and waves of surreal, twisted imagery he had been bombarded with before was a normal silhouette of a normal person; someone short, a little stocky, with a strand of wispy hair that stuck out at the top. He was hallucinating, yes, but for a brief moment, everything seemed so calm, even as its body continued to softly puff out figments of color into the surrounding air. It was beautiful, mesmerizing, and even relaxing to look at in a way, but the looming sense of dread that lingered over him only seemed to amplify. Something about this person was… wrong. They weren’t real-- that much was obvious-- and they stood idly as something that could only be comparable to a mass of pitch-black star matter, but much more than that, something felt off about them. He squinted his eyes as if to focus on the figure better, and though no new information became visible, something he realistically should have thought a lot sooner became apparent, and his blood ran cold.

This person… he’s seen them before. 

Mikado didn’t even realize he was no longer breathing. It felt as though the hand of a ghost had pierced his ribcage, crushing his heart and lungs and forcing bile into the back of his throat. He swallowed hard, trying to choke back anything he could reasonably assume was about to surface, as he continued to stare, both parties remaining unmoving. Any other time, he could handle this. The fear, the excitement, the pure ecstasy… any other time than now, when every function in his body was on the verge of breaking down like a rusted machine. Hell, it wasn’t even really him, and Mikado knew this, but his mind was so clouded after days of increasingly built-up exhaustion that the parts of him which could rationalize the situation had long since suffocated within a heavy mental fog. It was like a thin film of white noise was entangling itself around his skull like a bolt of thin fabric as the surrounding room became a dull, uniform grey in color and a low ringing echoed in his ears. Slowly, the crushing, gripping feeling in his chest loosened as his heartbeat plummeted. The massive tangle of emotions that welled up within him was the final blow to his frail body, which had already been pushed lightyears past its reasonable limits. He could feel his consciousness slipping alarmingly fast, but managed to choke out one word before he slumped off his chair and collapsed in a heap on the floor below.

“Ut...suro?”

**Author's Note:**

> Every single time I worked on this fic-- whether it be drafting, revising, or just staring at the screen-- I was sleep deprived.
> 
> Also, this is a testament to my abysmal work ethic. I started working on this in November and finished it 10 minutes ago...


End file.
